So one of the big pains of making tomato sauce from scratch is peeling the tomatoes. You’re supposed to score the bottom into a little X and then poach them (dip them in boiling water). You then take them out and rinse them with cold water. You can now just pull at the little corners of the X and peel the tomato. There’s a shortcut to this whole madness if you’re not making enough sauce to boil a whole pot of water just to peel some tomatoes.

When I make my tomato sauce from scratch I just take my tomato, slice it in half, and then grate the thing on a box grater into a bowl right after I squeeze and save the liquid in a bowl. It also works for salsa. Now if you want chopped tomatoes or are making a huge batch of sauce I recommend the boiling water.

Yes I seriously returned to the blog after 8 months to write this.

“The Nobel Peace Prize award to Barack Obama seems so goofy – even if you’re a fan, you have to admit that he hasn’t really done much yet as a peacemaker. But there’s an aspect of this prize that is real and important – and that validates Obama’s strategy from the day he took office… America was too unpopular under Bush. The Nobel committee is expressing a collective sigh of relief that America has rejoined the global consensus. They’re right. It’s a good thing. It’s just a little weird that they gave him a prize for it.”

Ah exactly how I feel. Good job and making the world love you. Did you really deserve it? Maybe not, but does the world not hate as much now? Yes. Phew.

Recently I got Dish Network which meant that I acquired DVRs and satellite boxes. You have to plug them into either your phoneline or ethernet port so that the boxes can call home to Dish to make sure everything is legitimate (this seems to be the same with DirectTV also) or else you pay $5.99 a month. Sure the TV by the router in the living room was no problem, right into the ethernet. The TV in our bedroom was another story. Our phone jack hasn’t worked since the house was remodeled and we were way too far from a router. We could run cords but it wasn’t exactly ideal. I thought about bridging a router to communicate back with the router in the living room but couldn’t find an extra one laying around.

Then fate brought a solution. I got a Linksys gaming adapter for about $30 from Woot (refurbished) made for wirelessly connecting your Xbox. You just set up your router settings with your computer (passwords and such), after that’s done you plug in your Xbox and voila it’s connected. Apparently it works with anything that has an ethernet connection, computers, PS2s, etc that you want to wirelessly connect . In my case it worked perfectly for the HD satellite box. It’ll pay itself off in 5 months.

Which brings me to my second new beginning, I won’t be writing here very much, not that I have at all. I’m thinking of splitting my time between two blogs. The first one being business related. We’ve dubbed the collaboration Plus 1  (or is it Plus One?). Regardless it’s going to specialize web design and politics, so I’ll be posting on our progress, trips and tricks of the trade, how-to-network and how some twenty somethings manage their lives using the power of the internet.

Why Plus 1? Well on campaigns your goal, obviously, is to win the majority of the vote which is usually “fifty plus one” perecent of the vote. I know it’s technically incorrect since you can win with just 50.3 but I digress. I’m hoping that my skills plus his design skills coupled with some business savvy and networking can really make inroads in progressive politics. Furthermore Plus 1 is bland enough that other businesses won’t be scared of using us for their own websites. So far it’s been pretty successful and I’ve worked pretty hard on this project in the last week everyday with full attention. So I’m hoping to keep it up even if means I have to hide out at Starbucks awhile.

The more personal blog, I haven’t decided to do yet, but Hung and I wanted to start something about ourselves, more relationship focused and maybe dabble some of our interests. I guess we’ve got this notion that we give out pretty good advice and we just want to stroke our egos a bit. This was formulated on the ride to my family’s house for Christmas so obviously it’s not ironed out. Anyway keep your eye out and until then I made a tiny portfolio website for myself: http://crystaltran.net.

And lastly, wooo January 20th, 2009! Inaguration Day!!

I already miss my office and the completely fantastic and WONDERFUL people I met in it. I’ve experienced a lifetime of graciousness, generosity, dedication, diligence, and stress in about six weeks from so many involved in the campaign. I already miss it even though I don’t miss not sleeping. The beautiful things about working in politics is that the effects of you work are often tangible. You know how many people you’re talking to, what you’re saying, how they’re feeling, it’s a very hands on occupation. Furthermore its rewards are intrinsic and the gratification you feel everyday is unmatched by most jobs.

Before this post gets to lengthy, I’m back to being a civilian now, taking a break. I just went on vacation to Miami to visit family, thinking about the next step in my young career, and making jambalaya tomorrow for dinner. Life is good, I am still riding high from the victories we did succeed in.

As for my feelings on Proposition 8, there’s a lot for me to say about it and why I think it lost, but I will leave it with a few sentences. First, I think the ban on gay marriage is something that is temporary, whether it be the courts, or public opinoin. I feel that at the very least, in a few decades we’ll look back on this and say “Why did we ban this in the first place? Why are the private lives of others so important to us?”. To me personally, marriage is a means to create families, and families are the backbones of our society, providing the support and love needed for so many individuals. Anything that encourages families is only going to help society. Alienating groups from society just gives them ambivalence to the majority around them, and it’s just not constructive. Furthermore marriage is not going to change someone’s sexuality, just because they can’t get married doesn’t meant that my neighbors aren’t gay. Really, it doesn’t change that at all.

There are a lot of reasons on a political and strategic level as to why I think Prop 8 passed, but one of the biggest things is that I think a lot of people took California’s progressive image for granted. Because of that they stayed home, didn’t talk their neighbors, their friends and family, and tell them why. The grassroots movement needed bodies, they needed people on the phones, and knocking on doors, and the sense of urgency wasn’t there. I hope the next time around that this doesn’t happen, and that others don’t take their positions for granted. Things do not win or get defeated by themselves without a strong base of activist and supporters.

It’s crazy all the old stuff we have around in the house, I found letters and yearbooks from elementary school. Old paintings, invitations to birthdays, Mami Otaki’s address when she moved from Laguna Niguel back to Japan and she gave me a Domokun card with a her new address in it. I didn’t even know what Domokun was. I of course have lots of toys and relics from Mew Mew and Murphy and of course Dave leaving me a little sentimental.

So with that news I leave you a poem I wrote for my Mom on one of my “Meet the Masters” bamboo painting projects from 2nd grade.

My Mom

Mother
So forgetful
So gentle, so caring
Who is trying to lose pounds
My mom

How’s that for tact? For those of you that are wondering, my Mom is moving to West Covina temporarily while she shops around for a new house. She has plenty of time as she is taking the rest of the year off.

How could anyone who went to college between the years of 2001-2003 not know the procrastination machine that Homestar Runner was during finals, papers and midterms. I didn’t even know what to say, how could such a pivotal piece of internet pop culture escape him when he is only three years older than me? Maybe he was too busy being cool and picking up chicks instead of watching the trance sketch with Strong Bad.  It’s okay now though, we’ve gone through and revisisted Trogdor and played Samauri Showdown which is not a euphemism for fornication.

I’m not sure what it is, but I love grass jelly. It’s strangely bland and herbal tasting, but add a little bit of simple syrup and it’s so delicious and cheap! One can runs about 89 cents and they offer green, black, and yellow kinds now. I prefer the green but black is a close second.  I have yet to try yellow which is ai yu jelly from Taiwan and made from “the seeds of a fig plant” according to Wikipedia. Maybe it’s the FOB in me but between that and durian ice cream, I will eat them both up.

I’ve always wondered what the green jelly was made of and I’ve seen mini-plastic packs of it in Little Saigon that resemble the canned green jelly I find. I shall pick it up next time in town and let you know if it indeed a fresh version. The black kind is made of some Chinese herbal plant though to have cooling properties but what’s the green jelly made of? Regardless I consume it. Do not consume it if you’re a lady afraid of getting pregnant, the black grass jelly as a high estrogen content (as does soy).

How to make grass jelly:

Chill your can of grass jelly, I prefer green but black is good too. Cut the can of jelly (better if you can find it fresh somewhere in your local Asian specialty store) into 1 cm cubes.

Combine 1 cup of sugar with 3 cups of water to make a syrup. You can make it a 1:1 ratio of sugar and water and then add ice cubes if you’re too impatient to chill the mixture afterwards. Enjoy or pour over some shaved ice. Yum.

What we did last Friday night:

• Started a composting pit in the yard. Yes I dug holes for food waste, so I can eventually take up gardening this plot of land.
• Contemplating vermi-composting to be quasi-hippy (already shopping for a commuter bike).
• Cleaning our room. Re-organizing closet space
• Buying feather shuttlecocks to play at the badminton club.
• Going to the 99 Cent store
• Going to Ralphs.

It’s funny how co-habitation has made a boring weekend tolerable, during college I’d be screaming to get outside, to do something, to go somewhere. I’m sure $5 gas is also convincing, but there’s a type of stability that this relationship brings, that it must help me quash that void somewhere. Somehow being together makes it okay to stay-in. That and the thought of Hung finishing his studies so we can do the things on our list:

I want to get married, I want to provide you the guest, with an open bar. I want to have children, I want to own a home, and I want to add a center speaker to my Polk home theater system. I want to go to Europe, to see a World Cup, go to a winter Olympics, and go to Hong Kong to eat dim sum. I want to get some new lenses, go on road trips, take my nieces out, and the list continues…

That said, this weekend I won’t be home, but I’ve been really dying to take a crack and cleaning the shower doors in our bathroom. Alas, next time.

I really should have bought some. I wonder if they’re a Korean favorite…no?